Doesn't work correctly when calling 'git --no-pager diff'

[mortenfyhn]

First of all, thanks for this tool, I like it a lot.

So, maybe this is the expected behaviour. I'm using zsh, which by default activates the pager when running git diff. I don't like that, so my git diff aliases use the --no-pager option. From what I see, diff-so-fancy disables the pager again. I think it would then be better if running git diff and git --no-pager diff produced the same output.

You can see here what I'm getting:

EDIT: I see now that diff-so-fancy uses the pager only when the diff doesn't fit in the terminal window, but I guess the issue still is valid.

[scottchiefbaker]

I'm a little confused here... Are you implying that d-s-f is setting --no-pager for you? d-s-f prefers that the git pager be disabled, so it certainly doesn't enable it. What you're screenshot shows is a bunch of shell aliases, which d-s-f does not set. I suspect your shell is getting in the way and somehow setting those aliases that enable the pager.

You can grep the d-s-f code for pager and see that the only interaction we have with any type of pager is in our documentation listing how to disable it.

[mortenfyhn]

My screenshot is a bit confusing. The aliases are mine, and the repo and file shown are arbitrary. I wanted to show that using --no-pager makes the output different. For instance, the word-delimited highlighting disappears, and the modified: <filename> with lines around too.

It can be avoided by removing without --no-pager, but it took me a while to realize, so I reckoned maybe some other are using aliases with --no-pager and getting the same issue.

[scottchiefbaker]

I'm still not following 100% but it's starting to make more sense.

The top screenshot is a vanilla git diff, there is no d-s-f output on that. The bottom screenshot is git diff piped to d-s-f.

Ultimately this is not a d-s-f problem. It appears to be more of "git not calling d-s-f" problem. I'd investigate git, or your shell? I'm not sure what would cause --no-pager to not call d-s-f.

[scottchiefbaker]

I stand corrected!

I just tested git --no-pager diff on my local repo and I get the same output that you do. d-s-f is never called when --no-pager is used. I suspect this has to do with the alias that we use to instantiate d-s-f.

git config --global core.pager "diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFX"

Perhaps we need another alias for no-pager? I'm not super familiar with git aliases though.

[scottchiefbaker]

For what it's worth, git --no-pager diff | diff-so-fancy works as you would expect.

The issue is that the internal git alias for --no-pager doesn't call d-s-f. I'm not a git expert, so I'm open to suggestions on a fix.

[mortenfyhn]

I think even just mentioning it in the readme would be useful, I reckon that's where people first look if something isn't working.

[bew]

To have the correct behavior, I think you can use the following alias:

fancy-diff = "!f() { git diff $@ | diff-so-fancy; }; f"

Using it like: git fancy-diff a_file.txt or git --no-pager fancy-diff a_file.txt

[tucq88]

My special case

Left is classic git diff
Right is git diff | diff-so-fancy

It's only be incorrect with last files, tried many times :(

[scottchiefbaker]

@mortenfyhn if you write the doc update to explain this (you understand it better than I do) I'll gladly merge it.

[scottchiefbaker]

Looks like this is fixed... perhaps a documentation update is needed. If someone writes up the doc updates I'll land them.